2of4(Left to Right) Bridgeport mayor Joe Ganim and Francisco Gomes, senior project manager at Fitzgerald & Halliday, Inc., during announcement of six month process to update the city Master Plan of Conservation and Development in 2018. The city has launch a new initiative focused on rewriting zoning codes to facilitate development goals featured in the master plan.Photo: Jordan Grice / Hearst Connecticut Media

4of4Thomas Gill has been chosen as the new economic development director for the City of Bridgeport, July 18, 2016.Photo: Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

Bridgeport officials are hoping to bolster future development with a series of zoning rewrites.

The city launched a project earlier this week designed to streamline zoning and permitting for developers and investors. For the next 18 months, the city will be working with Florida-based consulting firm Duncan Associates to redevelop zoning codes that will align goals featured in Plan Bridgeport, the 10-year master plan of conservation and development.

“There are two dozen or more recommendations in Plan Bridgeport that spoke to planning and zoning,” said Lynn Haig, Bridgeport’s director of planning and zoning.

The new project, dubbed Zone Bridgeport, is meant to make way for future development featured in the master plan, according to Haig. The plan calls for hundreds of new units of apartments and affordable housing and additional transit-oriented and waterfront development.

Plan Bridgeport also features themes focused on improving neighborhoods and making the city more livable, which Haig said are things also impacted by zoning.

“The zoning codes don’t exist unless we have a plan of conservation and development and we have to have that new plan every 10 years,” she said. “They are intimately integrated, and one is connected to the other. If we want to grow our grand list, we need to make sure the zoning supports that growth.”

With the help of Duncan Associates, city officials will reach out to residents for feedback on the changes they’d want to see in zoning regulations. That will put the final draft of rewrites out by 2021.

Officials said they plan to use input from the site and from community events to restructure regulations citywide. The final version of the map will allow users to access the zoning information about those same parcels or areas.

The city also plans to launch a new online permitting system in the next six to eight months.

Restructuring zoning codes is meant to make it easier for developers and investors work with the city, according to Tom Gill, director of the Office of Planning and Economic Development in Bridgeport.

“As the city of Bridgeport we are in competition with other towns and other cities for the same development that they are,” he said. “We want to be the quickest and the fastest and most efficient in doing this, and it’s something that is really (needed) to move this city forward.”